


first and only

by sunsmasher



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius, non-graphic descriptions of childbirth, well except for one joke. forgive me.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22489522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsmasher/pseuds/sunsmasher
Summary: The midwife lets Sylvain hold his daughter thirty-five minutes after she’s born. She’s red as a plum, with a scrunchy, smushy face like the inside of an elbow, swaddled in a blanket eight generations old.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 272





	first and only

**Author's Note:**

> Felix is trans, I am not. Let me know if there are any other tags I should add.

The midwife lets Sylvain hold his daughter thirty-five minutes after she’s born. She’s red as a plum, with a scrunchy, smushy face like the inside of an elbow, swaddled in a blanket eight generations old.

She weighs as much in his arms as a jug of milk or a little bag of sugar. Not heavy things, but real ones. Things that exist, that he has touched and held, whose weight he will remember all his life, because they weigh as much as his daughter did, the day he first met her.

“Hello, little darling,” Sylvain says, soft, so as not to wake her or her father, soft, so as to get the words out at all. He’s been awake for a day and a night and now it’s nearly night again, the sunset light deep and rosy-red through the windows in his and Felix’s bedchamber. Coherent thought escaped him around noon, when Felix’s arm moved from “slung around Sylvain’s neck” to “actively choking him out” as one of several midwives said something encouraging and Felix screamed and cursed her entire family, living and dead. Mental ability’s yet to return and so very unlikely to, if Sylvain is being honest. He’s happy to see it go. “Hello, petal, little rose, little snotbubble, little Duchess, little Margravine,” he says to his daughter, looking at her, rocking her gently, bumping his shoulder against the chilly window glass but unable to move from the light. “You finally made it. You’re out here in the world. How does it look?”

She doesn’t reply. She’s very tired, he’ll have to understand. She’s had quite the traumatic day. Lots of screaming and upset and, per the midwife, all her lovely black hair is probably going to fall out. Maybe it won’t, Sylvain hopes it won’t, she looks so much like Felix, grumpy and dark, but probably it will. “I’ll love you anyways,” he says, looking without end, learning every sleepy line on her wrinkled face. “Whatever you look like. Whatever you do.”

There’s a shifting noise, sheets sliding over each other. “Sh’meet all y’r standards?”

It’s the only thing that could make Sylvain stop looking at his daughter. Felix blinks at the two (two!) of them from the bed, looking grey and sweaty and run right to shit. “Hey,” Sylvain says, in the exact same quavering tone he used with their daughter. It’s like an affliction. “I’ve got her, go back to sleep.”

“Mm,” Felix grumbles, shaking his head, then tries and fails to sit up. Their daughter did things to his pelvic floor that the midwife said would heal “just fine” and Felix said “would never be forgiven” and Sylvain loves him, and their daughter, and even whatever the situation is with Felix’s pelvic floor, so that’s okay. He sits at the edge of the bed, within Felix’s reach, their daughter in his arms. They haven’t picked a name yet. It’ll happen eventually.

Felix’s hair trails across the pillows like little rivers, black oxbows over red silk fields. Together they watch their daughter burble and snort, discovering the complexities of breath outside the womb. 

“She seems a lot smaller when she’s not in me,” Felix says.

Sylvain nods.

“Look at that giant forehead,” Felix says. “Just like you.”

“No,” Sylvain says, “no, no,” swaying his head back and forth. “She looks like you. She looks so much like you.”

“You sure? She’s all red and wrinkly. That’s all your blood.”

“No,” Sylvain says again, “she’s beautiful. Just like you. All yours.”

Felix’s hand touches his elbow, sliding up his arm. Sylvain leans down for it without thought, curving over their child. “She’s yours, too,” Felix says. His hand cups Sylvain’s cheek, brushing the damp skin under his eye. “Just as much as mine.”

Sylvain nods again, leaning against Felix’s hand like a buttress. He watches a little shifting fold in their daughter’s blanket, where her hand could be, learning how to move. “I was so scared,” he says. “I—“

Felix doesn’t reply. He lets Sylvain swallow and try again, holding his head, stroking his cheek. “I didn’t know if I could feel—if I’d be able to—“ He doesn’t even want to say it, to give more oxygen to this ridiculous, idiot terror that spent nine months ripping into his lungs and clawed around for a good thirty-two years prior. It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t _true._

“I love her _so much,”_ Sylvain says. “She’s _amazing.”_

“Yeah, she is,” Felix says. Sylvain kisses him.

He tastes terrible, because he threw up a few hours ago and no one offered him water in case he threw it at them again. It’s absolutely fine. He’d laughed, too, when the baby finally dropped out of him and Sylvain nearly fainted right out from his under his arm, woozy and elated. Felix had laughed for a full, rounded minute, as strong as a horse. He’d held their daughter to his chest.

“Awwaahhawwam,” says their daughter.

 _“Hi,_ sweetheart,” says Sylvain, gaze on her again like it’d never been anywhere else, her widening blue eyes, the twisty black curls the peek out of her blanket cocoon. “Hello, hello.”

She’s got Fraldarius eyes. Blue as her uncle’s, honest as her father’s. Felix presses against Sylvain, stroking a finger down their daughter’s cheek. “It’s you,” he says to her.

“It’s you,” Sylvain repeats. An assessment, a celebration, a learning experience for them all. Here we are and here are you and here is how I begin, with the smallest, still-forming steps, to explain you. More than a jug of milk and some bags of sugar.

“It’s you. Hello, little darling.”

**Author's Note:**

> normally I don't post short stuff to ao3 but I liked this one too much to leave it on twitter. I just enjoy. when sylvain holds babies.
> 
> main twitter is @[lambergeier](https://twitter.com/lambergeier/), fire emblem-specific is @[firegeier](https://twitter.com/firegeier/).


End file.
